Friday Night Baseball returning to Apple TV+, but no Immersive Video for Vision Pro

Zac Hall | Mar 7 2024 - 7:42 am PT

Friday Night Baseball is returning to Apple TV+ on March 29. This marks the third Major League Baseball season with Apple streaming two MLB games each week. But don’t expect Immersive Video for Apple Vision Pro this season.

While Apple has planned Immersive Video on Apple Vision Pro for Major League Soccer coverage this year, its streaming deal with Major League Baseball is very different. Apple bought the rights to a decade of streaming MLS, but its MLB deal is far more limited. If only Apple owned all the sports… at least the Apple TV app on Vision Pro is a home run experience.

Instead, Apple is promoting its new Sports app as the latest technology tie-in with its Friday Night Baseball deal. Since Apple basically themes the games it streams from Major League Baseball, we haven’t seen Apple do much in the way of innovating how baseball games are viewed with Friday Night Baseball. The biggest innovation with Apple’s Friday Night Baseball, perhaps, has been international availability and no blackouts to deal with in the US.

Apple and Major League Baseball (MLB) announced that “Friday Night Baseball,” a weekly doubleheader, will be available to Apple TV+ subscribers on Fridays throughout the 2024 regular season. Fans in 60 countries and regions can enjoy two marquee matchups over 26 weeks with no local broadcast restrictions. “Friday Night Baseball” will begin on opening weekend of the 2024 season — Friday, March 29 — with some of the game’s biggest stars taking center stage. Coverage begins at 7:30 p.m. ET with Juan Soto, Aaron Judge, and the new-look New York Yankees lineup taking on the Houston Astros. And beginning at 9:30 p.m. ET, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and the Los Angeles Dodgers will host the St. Louis Cardinals.

Still, Apple Vision Pro users can turn to the MLB app for visionOS for an experience tailored for the new device:

While watching a game in the MLB App on Apple Vision Pro, Apple’s revolutionary new spatial computer designed to seamlessly blend digital content with the physical world, users can enter a fully immersive, three-dimensional viewing environment with interactive statistics, play-by-play and other features that can be fully controlled by the user, including enhanced data visualizations powered by Statcast.

The new MLB App on Apple Vision Pro also allows users to place their viewing experience within a digitally rendered MLB ballpark, simulating the experience of watching on a stadium’s videoboard.

MLB is also bringing multiview from the web to Apple TV starting with the 2024 season. And T-Mobile subscribers, mark your calendars, as MLB TV returns as a perk starting March 26.